


Heroes of Our Own Kind

by m4x_87



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Lots of it, Swearing, first person (sorry)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 02:03:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m4x_87/pseuds/m4x_87
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two young Alchemists, eager to follow in their heroes footsteps, find themselves separated from each other far from home, on a journey they never could have anticipated, against an enemy they may not be strong enough to vanquish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Martina

My name is Martina Kymball, and ever since before we could crawl or say full sentences, my sister Cecily and I have wanted to be just like our hero and his brother. It's a simple thing – every child who has a hero does it. Some want to be like their parents, some like a superhero from a book. Our hero is more complex. He was the youngest State Alchemist in a thousand years. Young hero of the Thule Society Invasion, he and his brother gave their lives to prevent a murderous incursion from beyond The Gate. 

Edward Elric: The Fullmetal Alchemist. 

I'd been told stories of him since the cradle. How he joined the States' Alchemic Corps at twelve, and his adventures – which have become legend. There isn't a child in the world who hasn't heard of him and been filled with awe. Proof that dreams are possible. 

At three, my twin sister and I drew our first alchemy circle. 

We blew up the shed.

For some, this dubious success – for a reaction of any kind means that you have succeeded – would have been discouraging. For my sister and I, it was fuel for the fire sparked by those marvelous – and sometimes tragic – stories. Our heroes. We devoured Alchemical text day and night, to the growing concern of our parents. We trained in martial arts by whatever teachers we could find (mostly do-it-yourself instructional videos) until we could do it blindfolded. And when we had our inevitable blind-folded bout, we broke two fingers and a leg, my fingers on the newly built shed, and Cecily's leg on the nearby plow. 

As soon as we were better, we tried harder. 

When we were ten, and making plans to travel to New Central to join up with the State Alchemists, our mother sat us down and tried to dissuade us from our chosen life paths. She told us a story about our heroes – a story that we hadn't heard yet. The story of how they'd lost their mother, and how they'd tried to bring her back using human transmutation. 

Human Transmutation. 

A forbidden art so heinous that people found guilty of it by the state were never heard from again. 

I won't lie – when I heard that my hero was guilty of such a crime, I had a moment of doubt, and I could see by Cecily's expression that she had one too. Until that moment we had labored under the false assumption that Edward had lost his limbs in the accident that had claimed their mother. Apparently not. She had died of natural causes, and they had tried to pull her back without knowing the full cost. Edward lost his leg. Alphonse lost his whole body. Edward, to save his brother whatever way he could, sacrificed his arm to seal his brother's soul into the suit of armor that was depicted in every statue of them that we'd ever seen. That was the start of their legendary adventure.

But if mom meant to scare us off of Alchemy or our heroes, it didn't work. 

The next time Cecily and I exchanged a look, it was to size each other up, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing: _I'm not gonna be the suit of armor._

Our parents sent us to a therapist. 

The therapist sent us back with a note that our talk of emulating our heroes physically was just childish dreaming and suggested that they send us to a city, where the experiences and the people were more complex than rural life. A place where we could see our parents' work implemented first hand. 

Oh. I probably should have mentioned that my parents make and surgically apply the metal prosthetics known as auto-mail. That's gonna be important later, seeing as they trained us to follow in their footsteps despite our desire to become alchemists. 

Anyway, sending us to the city didn't exactly help our parents turn us towards their way of thinking. While we abandoned our interest in chopping off limbs in hope of looking more like our heroes, being in the city only fueled our alchemy fever. There was a State Alchemist there that we made fast friends with, and what luck – he was the descendant of the man who helped our heroes along. His name was Jonathon Mustang, the Junior Flame Alchemist. Cecily had a huge crush on him. Well as big a crush as an eleven year old can have. 

We applied to take the State Alchemist exam almost as soon as we arrived in the city. It was a huge shock to us when we were denied, but we were so sure that if we showed them our stuff, they'd have to let us join them. We made quite a spectacle of ourselves, and our youthful recklessness almost got a few people seriously injured. Mustang was sent by his superiors to reprimand us and we ended up being spanked like the children we were in public. We didn't get in the next year either. We were so disappointed not to have honored our heroes by following in their footsteps as the youngest State Alchemists yet, but when we were thirteen, Mustang made a case for us, and they allowed us to apply. 

I got in first. Cecily was rejected because they only take one or two a year. We got a special dispensation for that too only a couple months later when she helped me out on a mission that saved a small city to the south from an alchemist who was suffering a psychotic break. It almost killed us both to take him out, but in the end, we were stronger together.

Our parents were terrified for us. We had never been more proud or ourselves and each other. Cecily was called The Exceptional Alchemist. They called me The Universal Alchemist. I never really liked the name; it reminded me of a tool my dad had once patented. Mustang was put in charge of us, a fate he loudly bemoaned but that we later found out he had petitioned for. What a character. We were with the State Alchemists for a couple years before an unallied Alchemist – Called the Reaper for some time – began making an appearance. 

He would arrive in small towns and villages and stay the night. He'd talk with a few people, shake their hands. Once he used Alchemy to cure a child's broken arm. The next day he'd leave. Within a day of his departure, the people that he'd talked to or touched would fall ill. Within a week, they were dead, sometimes taking with them those who were close enough to them to spread the disease to. Then came the worst part. The people who had died would rise from death as mindless zombies and turn on their former friends and neighbors. Those that were bitten or clawed would succumb to the darkness that had taken their families and the vicious cycle would begin again. 

There was great unrest in the country. Towns and cities had taken to burning their dead, and in some of the more outlying areas, where the situations were darker, anyone who was thought to be deathly ill was made to sleep before being burned alive. 

Women. 

Children. 

Mustang was assigned to put together a squad to deal with it. Cecily and I were on it. We were investigating to the west when we met him. Reginald Davies. Even though the zombie menace had only cropped up recently, he had been hard at work researching a solution. He was a doctor, and he and an associate had been researching healing techniques. Unfortunately, his associate had been keeping a far more sinister goal in mind.

"Marty, watch your back!" Cecily shouted off to my left, and I swung wide with my spear in time to foil a one-armed zombie that had been sneaking into a sneak attack position. I dodged to the side, grimacing at how close to they had come. _Too close_ , I thought, turning to Cecily's side of the battle. Some of the risen dead were wearing uniforms, and I felt a twinge of remorse as I clapped my hands together. Soon after Cecily and I became Alchemists, we paid a visit to a tattoo parlor. It took years to work up the money to get each tattoo in the palms of our hands, both of which now bear small, specially designed alchemy circles using a special kind of ink - hard to come by. We had never been able to do what Edward Elric had done, but we knew that it had saved his life on several occasions, so we improvised. I compressed and heated the air around them and baked them until they crumbled into bloodless, dismembered heaps. It took about a second. 

"Reg, you finished with that circle yet?" I yelled over my shoulder before turning back to the horde. More corpses shuffled into the room, where Reginald Davies looked up from his work. The circle. It was important – it was the only way to stop the corpses from rising. It wasn't a cure-all – no one would come back, and being bitten would still kill you, but you wouldn't get up again, so it was just a matter of destroying whatever was left. The Reaper was still out there, but this was going to stop him. This was going to make everything right again. It _had_ to. After all, when the State had ordered us not to pursue it, we had abandoned our post to see it through. We still carried the pocket-watches, but 'Rogue Alchemist' might as well have been stamped on our foreheads. 

"Almost there, my friends," he assured us. Cecily was holding her own but the horde was overwhelming, so I sent a wave of air bombs – Roy Mustang style – her way to clear some of the field. She waved away some of the smoke and smirked. 

"Thanks," she said, shifting the topography of the rocky earth in front of her and flinging several corpses away. Her last tattoo was the freshest, and she still winced every time her palms touched. 

"The circle is almost complete. Hurry!" Reginald urged. The two of us clapped our hands and made a tall wall of rock around the circle before turning and gingerly stepping into the gigantic Alchemy circle, doing our best not to smudge the lines. There were smaller circles for us, resting on the points of a giant triangle that would connect our power and our will, and we stood inside them while Reginald stepped into a third just like it. 

The sound of a roaring blaze and the stench of burnt death made me stop and turn, and the three of us shielded our eyes as part of the rock wall was obliterated allowing—I couldn't believe it.

"Mustang!" I yelped, heart beating crazily in my chest. I looked at Cecily, who looked equal parts thrilled to see her crush (still going strong), terrified of being sent into a small prison cell never to be seen or heard from again, and confused. I could sympathize, but along with confusion came a horrible dread. We'd been told he'd been killed. "You're _alive?_ "

"Kymballs, get _out of there!_ " he shouted. I felt a lump of fear in my throat at the sheer alarm – the _panic_ in his voice. I looked at Cecily.

"We can't! We have to stop the Reaper, _please_ understand!" Cecily told him, and he gritted his teeth. 

"You idiots! This is a _trap! **He's** the Reaper!_ " Mustang shouted back. 

My heart thudded painfully as I turned and looked into Reginald's contemptuously smiling face. 

Oh my god. 

Oh my god, he _tricked_ us.

A snarl twisted my features and I curled my hands into fists. 

"You _bastard_."

"Oh, perhaps now I should mention that it wasn't my partner's ambitions but my own. _He_ was the one with reservations, and so of course I had to make him my very first test subject," he told us. Cecily put a hand over her mouth and turned green. "He would have told everyone otherwise, and that would have spoiled everything," he added with a grin that twitched at one corner.

"And what is this?" I demanded. 

"Oh, this will amplify my power so that I can spread my work across the world. Isn't it beautiful?"

How? How had he been able to hide this lunacy from us for so long?

"This grotesquery ends right here," I said. 

Stepping out of the circle towards him was abruptly halted by the most curious sensation of loss, and a numbness that I wouldn't understand for some time. I could hear screaming off to my right, and behind me. Cecily. Mustang. I heard the crackle of flame and smelled burning flesh and a black gate opened its doors and then there was nothing.

**

_A darkened hallway full of doors. How did I get here?_

_A shout. I turn my head._

_Cecily._

_Our clasped hands make me feel better – more – not completed, but less broken._

_Where are we? In the gate, I suppose, but what are all these doors?_

_I turn to the end of the hall._

_A dark anger fills me. I see it mirrored in Cecily's face._

_Reginald. The Reaper._

_He runs._

_We chase._

_He has a lead, but we're younger._

_We've trained harder._

_We can run faster for longer._

_(We're still holding hands._

_I can feel Cecily's pulse in time with mine.)_

_We're catching up._

_That door up ahead. It's open?_

_He's heading towards it!_

_We have to catch him._

_We have to stop him._

_Cecily grabs his coat on the threshold of the door, yanks._

_We collide. I feel a stab of disgust just touching him, as though some of his crazy is leaking into me and leaving a bad taste in my mouth._

_We're toppling forward._

Through _the door._

_He's slipping away._

_Cecily, hang on._

_Cecily, I can't feel your hand anymore._

_Cecily?_


	2. Martina

I woke up in a soft bed, in a warm room, but the numb heat of my arm and my leg told me that what I remembered was not a dream. I sat up, grabbing my side where it twinged and looking down at the stump where my arm had been stolen by Reginald's twisted Alchemy. The conversion of human souls into some twisted demonic army. That bastard. Teeth gritting hard and looking down at the uneven lumps of the blanket, I took a moment to grieve, but not for the leg that I knew would be missing. Remembering how Mustang had tried to mar Reginald's work after his circle had swallowed part of my body, and the sight of my sister being torn apart by the broken circle and the upset laws of physics.

The look of lost despair on Mustangs...on Jonathon's face before the blackness took me. I covered my face with my one good hand and took a few fortifying breaths that devolved into heaving sobs.

Why was I alive? Why me and not Cecily?

I think I blacked out for a little bit. When I came to, I decided that I wasn't ready to deal with my loss, so I set about planning my revenge instead. In my head I made a plan. It started with finding out where I was, and ended with me ripping the Reaper to pieces. To start with, I needed information.

I got out of bed.

I fell down a lot.

Whoever had found me had cauterized my wounds – probably to keep me from bleeding out – an effective if barbaric measure, as long as there were no blood-clots. It also made what I was planning a little more difficult. I was going to have to cut away a little of what was left of my limbs. The thought made me woozy and I almost threw up, but luckily I was going to be able to put it off for a while.

The room rocked occasionally.

Sea-faring vessel then. Metal. Probably military. I wasn't wearing my own clothes. I had none of my possessions on me. I was wearing some sort of a uniform, though. Black and red – not unlike the Elrics.

The thought stopped me for a moment and I bowed my head.

In all the stories that I'd heard or read, Edward Elric both exalted and detested his metal appendages, and the loss of the flesh of his brother. I understood that a little better now and my newfound similarity to my hero made my smile a wry, bitter one.

There was a spear against the wall and I grabbed it, using my thumbnail to carve a small circle into it. It wasn't perfect, but it would do, and shortly I had a wooden crutch reinforced with metal. Outside the door was a guard, and I knew something was wrong the second he opened his mouth and gibberish fell out of it in a concerned rush.

"Aw, man." I sighed, leaning against the door. The guard said something else and reached for me.

I hit him with the crutch and growled at him until he backed off, leaning against the wall so I wouldn't fall down. He spoke yet more gibberish as he lingered out of reach and rubbed his ear where I'd boxed him and pointed down a hall. It was possible he was pointing towards the brig, or a death room of sorts. Wherever I was, it sure wasn't the Continent. I chose to go in the direction that he indicated, ignoring him as he hovered and hobbling down the shifting walkway. A particularly hard rock of the ship sent me stump first into a wall, and I stayed there for a moment, allowing the armored guard to put his hand on my good arm and my waist. He murmured soothing nonsense while I sucked in steadying breaths and tried not to vomit through the black dots that crowded my vision.

I choked hard on a sob when I realized that his soothing ramble reminded me of my sister.

I was not going to cry in front of a complete stranger in unfamiliar territory. No way in hell.

After a moment I pushed myself off the wall and kept going.

On the deck of the ship – our apparent destination – I found several more guards as well as a heavily armored youth with a scar on his left eye. He was just a little bit older than me by the look of it. I wonder if he sympathized with my...injuries. Someone – a guard – said something to me, but the words were just as unfamiliar coming from him as they were coming from the one standing next to me, and I sighed, shaking my head at my misfortune. When I didn't answer to his satisfaction, the youth barked something rough and demanding at me. I tilted my head at him and offered an expression of exasperated apology.

"I can't understand a single thing you're saying," I told him. He blinked, looking uncertain for a brief second before turning to another man who was there. He was older than the young man – much – and shorter. Portly, but not in a way that seemed a product of sloth. He appeared steady. He was very calm, and when he spoke, several of the guards that had approached and surrounded me stepped back to give me space. The only one who didn't was the one who'd escorted me down the hall. I glanced at him for a moment before shrugging my stump and ignoring him. The old man who had stood down the guards put his hand on his chest and bowed deeply.

"Iroh," he said, and I bowed my head in understanding of his introduction.

"Nice to meet you, Iroh," I said, before leaning on my crutch and putting my good hand on my chest. "Martina Kymball," I said, making sure to put space between my first and last name so they'd know there were two.

"€₸₢₰ ₳₣ ₔ₰₰₳ ₹₣₺, Martina," the old man said, and I nodded, smiling with pained politeness. The younger man said something in an angry voice and Iroh replied calmly, all in a language that I knew I would have to learn if I wanted to get by in this place. There was a twinge in my chest that I tried to ignore as I wished that Cecily were here. My twin has always been more adept at the softer sciences; language would never come so easily to me as it had to Cecily.

God, I missed her.

"₸ ℓₔ ₲₮₸€₢₰ Zuko," said the younger man eventually. I nodded.

"Zuko," I parroted. He scowled.

" **₲₮₸€₢₰** Zuko," he repeated, and I blinked for a moment before considering the emphasis on a word that might have been a name but was more likely a title.

"₲₮₸€₢₰," I said slowly, looking him over and looking at Iroh for confirmation – not so much of my suspicions as my pronunciation. He smiled at me. He looked a little proud and I wondered why as I looked back at the youth and then at all the men who were standing at attention.

Oh.

So he was royalty or something.

So ₲₮₸€₢₰ meant 'prince' probably.

Got it.

"₲₮₸€₢₰ Zuko," I said, bowing my head. When I lifted it again, he was smirking. I looked at Iroh. He was less irritating. "Thank you for helping me," I said slowly. Iroh bowed deeply in return, smiling kindly. "₹₣₺ ℓ₮₰ ₔ₣₴₳ ₓ₰₡₢₣ₔ₰," he replied unintelligably.

**

It was apparently established that I wasn't a threat, and I allowed them to labor under that assumption, since I hadn't made up my mind about whether or not I liked them. They gave me my stuff back: my uniform – the parts of it that had survived – my chalk, my jewelry.

My State Alchemist Pocket watch.

I felt a little sick holding it. Sick with guilt. Fervently I hoped that Mustang had succeeded – that the broken circle meant that Reginald's alchemy had been foiled. I hoped that the world I left behind was still there. I clutched the pocket watch and wished that I could go back in time and fix everything.

But I couldn't. And I knew that.

"Sorry, John," I said, rubbing my thumb over the silver face that bore the State Alchemist's logo. "You were right and I should've listened. Should've listened to you," I sighed.

I took a moment to grieve for my losses. Then I took a breath, secured the watch to my uniform and got to work.

Alchemy worked in this place – thank god. I hadn't really registered that, even after making the crutch. It was a worry that simmered in the back of my mind until I drew the circle on the deck and cobbled together the statuette of my sister and I. After that statuette – which sent my spirit plummeting while strengthening my resolve – I knew that what I needed could be accomplished.

I drew up a list of requirements.

And when I say 'drew', I mean with diagrams. Learning their language was taking time, although I was surprised a little by how much easier than usual it was for me. Maybe it was shock. My brain flooding with adrenaline – hyper-vigilance. I was taking in all the details around me.

Apparently I was taking in the language too.

Before long, I had all the raw materials I needed, and I drew my circle on the deck. A few seconds, a transfer of energy, and there sat my new leg. I stared at it for a long moment and ignored the desire to throw it overboard, pulling it closer and inspecting it carefully.

Next came the part that was going to hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yay language barrier!  
> doesn't last that long, but I wanted it to be there.  
> And A03 apparently doesn't accept Symbol as an alternate font, but luckily some people on Tumblr helped me out.  
> Woot!  
> If you don't see the symbols as symbols, just assume that whatever's there to replace it is representative of a language Marty doesn't understand.  
> This is all just set up for the story that mostly follows A:TLA as a series with some messed up twists because...spoilers.  
> FMA was dark, and I brought some of that darkness into the story.  
> Now I get to go find all the written down bits and type them up.  
> Early chapters only rated mature for cursing (even though cursing is rarely mature) but there's gonna be violence and gore aplenty, so stay tuned.

**Author's Note:**

> Those of you who made it this far, I thank you.  
> I started writing this a while ago, when I tried to watch Avatar on Netflix but they removed it when I was about five episodes in, so I started watching FMA instead.  
> And my brain was like, 'hey. You should do a thing.'  
> So I did a thing.  
> More to come. Watching Avatar again to make sure I get the world right. Gonna watch FMA again too. Want to make sure that the alchemy is done right.  
> Also, evil guy is evil and his sudden confession(monologue?) is so anime.  
> Again:  
> Thank you thank you.


End file.
